The current trend in portable radio design is toward product miniaturization. For the radio to be small, it shoud ideally be made up of small parts or modules. One such module is the VCO module, which typically contains small thin film cpacitors and inductors.
The construction of conventional thin film capacitors and inductors is known. Typically, a metal pattern is deposited on a substrate, which is laser trimmed to form multiple capacitors or inductors. This substrate is cut to form the individual capacitors or inductors. The individual capacitor or inductor is placed on a module, such as a VCO, to enable an active trimming operation by a laser to optimize the VCO operation.
Since the substrate is cut to provide the individual components, the registration marks used to guide the laser trim operation are lost. Component placement on the VCO module is accomplished via the registration marks on the VCO module. Since the placement of the parts is non-ideal, the components may be skewed relative to these registration marks. Thus, the laser trimming procedure to optimize VCO performance requires a further realignment with registrations points taken from the individual capacitor or inductor. Since finding these sufficient registration points is a time-consuming process, a need exists to optimize this process.